As the electoral dust begins to settle, the new Labour government has already demonstrated a serious commitment to their mandate for increasing house building and fostering economic growth.
Charles Dunn, Director of Urbana and a Director of the Sheffield Property Association (SPA), has spoken on the SPA blog to share his insights on the government’s initial steps and what it could mean for Sheffield and the wider property sector.
“Its a promising start so far, the signs point to a bullish approach, perhaps surprisingly so.
“Immediate announcements following up previous hints -from the Chancellor no less- on Green Belt, on-shore wind farms, and the promise of 1.5m new homes suggest that the government is rightly placing property and development at centre stage.
“It could still be political rhetoric or can we expect genuine and consistent follow-through?
“They have acted almost incredibly fast to remove the de facto moratorium on onshore wind farms, but as we all know the political and technical challenges associated with tackling the Green Belt question, and substantially increasing housing delivery, are not nearly so easy. They also remain much more controversial.”
Key Points to Watch
Charles says on the blog how ‘Grey Belt’ has “Quickly entered the industry’s lexicon and we still don’t quite know what it means.
“Car parks, garages, wasteland but, how this actually changes what can be delivered on such land will come down to the fine detail; down to the last word of the drafting of policy. We have to wait and see, and it might be sensible not to get too excited just yet.”
Charles contemplates how radical the new government can actually be: “They are diving straight into a new National Planning Policy Framework, but with how much vigour will they approach any follow-through of hints at more ambitious goals?
“There has been talk of ‘the next generation of new towns’ and of removing barriers to the delivery of nationally significant infrastructure. But these are often highly controversial: how much political capital is the government willing to spend to drive through such ambitious goals?”
On the speed of implementing these policies, Charles says on the SPA blog: “Five years can seem like a long time, but we all know that the development pipeline can often feel glacial.
“The promise of 1.5m new homes across this parliament means immediately building at a level not seen for almost 50 years. Stepping up this delivery cannot happen overnight, with a lack of resources from Council planning departments to tradesmen on site. Even with the best will in the world, just how fast can this ramp up?”
